Katie Prokop, CEO
Katie Prokop didn’t want to move north.
In 1986, Katie and her husband, Gary, were looking for a new place to call home. Gary was offered a partnership in a small promotions company in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, by Katie’s father, Keith Arnold, who founded the business three years earlier. Katie was pregnant, unconvinced, and not particularly interested in moving.
Then she walked into the building.
“I was pregnant and 10 minutes inside of the building, I knew it was a done deal,” she said. “Gary was very much, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ And that’s what we did.”
Forty years later, Katie is CEO of that same company.
At the time, she was simply making a decision about where her family would live and what the next chapter of their lives might look like. What started as a move she wasn’t sure she wanted eventually became a much larger part of her story—and, along the way, an unexpected path to leadership.
Where it all started
Long before Katie took on a leadership role at Arrowhead, her father, Keith Arnold, was building the kind of company he wanted to be part of. He had experience in the promotions industry, but he wanted to build something of his own while putting down roots in northern Minnesota. Grand Rapids offered the community and workforce he believed could support the business he envisioned.
“His vision was to have a livelihood, to support people in the community,” Katie said.
More than four decades later, Katie still draws on this original purpose as she thinks about where Arrowhead is headed. The company has grown far beyond what her father started, but she sees growth as an opportunity to build on the company’s foundation rather than move away from it.
The handshake still counts
Keith’s vision was reflected in the way he did business. He believed in getting to know people, keeping his word, and building the kind of trust to turn a first interaction into a long-term partnership. “He built Arrowhead on personal relationships, you shook hands, and what you said you were going to do, you did, and that’s how it grew,” Katie said.
Decades later, the way businesses communicate has changed, but the importance of following through hasn’t. Whether communication happens by email, phone, or a digital platform, customers still want to know they can trust you to do what you say you’re going to do.
Growing through change
Every established business eventually faces the challenge of honoring what made it successful while adapting to what comes next. For Arrowhead, the challenge meant growing alongside an industry looking very different from the one it entered more than 40 years ago.
When Arrowhead was founded, promotions relied heavily on mail, paper forms, checks, and physical fulfillment. Katie remembers watching those processes gradually give way to digital ones. At one point, even being able to send a digital check a consumer could print, photograph, and deposit through their phone felt remarkable. Today, technology is simply a part of how business gets done.
“Technology far surpassed him,” Katie said of her father. “Technology’s changed everything in how the processing and the business is run.”
What didn’t change, she said, is the standard behind the work—being honest, following through, and treating relationships as the real product.
Leadership takes time
Katie’s own approach to leadership grew from many of those same principles. She doesn’t describe leadership as something to arrive with a title. For her, it came from years of listening, making decisions, getting some of them wrong, and adjusting.
“You need to listen. You really need to listen to what people say,” Katie said. “You have to trust the people you surround yourself with at work. They become the experts of what they’re supposed to do, and you have to trust and listen to them.”
She believes trust gives capable people room to do their jobs. Trust also recognizes the expertise within a team and creates an environment where people feel empowered. Being a good leader requires confidence, but it also requires humility. A leader doesn’t have to know everything, but they have to be willing to recognize what they don’t know and make room for the people who do.
A seat at the table
Katie’s experience also offers a perspective on what it means to grow into leadership as a woman. She acknowledges women can still encounter challenges in leadership, but her perspective has never been to let the challenges of women determine how she shows up.
“I ignore it,” she said. “If I have something to say, I say it. However, just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m sitting in the back seat. I will have a seat at the table if I feel I need one.”
She has also seen confidence grow in women throughout Arrowhead. “I think we’ve done a really good job of empowering and encouraging and coaching many women to take leadership roles, and they’ve done exceptionally well,” she said. For Katie, creating opportunities for women is part of a larger responsibility to the people who make up the company.
When family means the whole company
Family businesses can come with assumptions about how leadership works. There’s often an expectation that personal relationships automatically shape professional decisions.
“I don’t look at Matt and Luke as my sons. I look at them as having the jobs they have because I’m responsible for the almost 200 employees here,” she said.
Responsibility extends beyond the family itself. If someone is struggling, she wants that concern to reach someone who can help.
“If somebody in a department is having a hard time or struggling with something, it usually gets voiced, and somebody hears about it. If we can help, we make sure it gets to the right person. So I’d say, as a family business, the family becomes the entire staff or company.”
Carrying on a family business means more than protecting a family legacy. It extends to the people who come to work every day, the clients who trust Arrowhead with their business, and the community who has supported the company for more than four decades.
Preparing the next generation
The next generation of leaders will face changes Katie couldn’t have imagined when she first walked into Arrowhead. But the qualities she believes matter most—being good at what you do, listening, staying open to learning, and being willing to take on new challenges—aren’t tied to any particular technology or era.
Her advice is simple: “Be really good at what you do. Listen. Spread your wings. Don’t put yourself in a box. And don’t be afraid of anything.” Her advice reflects what she hopes the next generation will carry forward: the confidence to grow into opportunities rather than waiting until they have everything figured out.
Finding your own way
Katie’s story didn’t begin with a plan to become a leader. It began with a move she wasn’t sure she wanted to make, a family business she was still getting to know, and an opportunity that unfolded over time. Her path to leadership was shaped by the people around her, the lessons she learned along the way, and her willingness to step into what came next.
Today, she sees leadership in much the same way. The goal isn’t to follow someone else’s path exactly, or to hold on to the past simply because it worked. It’s to understand what matters, learn from the people who came before you, and have the confidence to build something of your own.
In a sense, the legacy Katie is helping shape isn’t just about where Arrowhead came from. It’s about creating a strong enough foundation for the people who come next to find their own way forward.
"Be really good at what you do. Listen. Spread your wings. Don't put yourself in a box. And don't be afraid of anything." - Katie Prokop
